Company overview: 

A specialist in developing, manufacturing, and marketing performance additives for the use in the construction, electronics, consumer products, agriculture, automotive, oil and gas industries worldwide. 

The main challenge: 

The drive to protect employees from potentially harmful respirable dusts is a priority for the company. They have identified prevention of exposure as the best form of protection, and, so, there is a drive to reduce the time their personnel spend inside the production facility. 

Whilst this ensures worker safety, it also generates its own problems; for instance, process leaks aren’t detected until an individual enters the production area and observes them. Due to the drive to limit exposure, this can lead to the loss of tons of product or raw materials before the problem is found. This loss of yield comes at a significant cost to the business. 

Multiple Air XD Dust Monitor devices were installed on site, with the aim of avoiding this on-going problem. 

How was the Air XD Dust Monitor utilised? 

Production at the site consisted of placing four vertical mills over two different buildings. In order to ensure that leaks were detected at different stages of the milling process, 14 Air XD devices were then installed in different positions around the plant. 

This also allowed the customer to easily identify the location any leaks that were detected. Air XD units were placed on different levels to monitor different parts of the process including the milling, drying and packing/loading areas. 

In order to meet the remote dust monitoring requirements of the customer, the signal and alarm outputs from the Air XD units were connected to a control panel located in the central control room. 

To maintain focus on dust generated by the production process rather than naturally occurring dust, the Air XD units were configured to focus on respirable dust in the PM4.25 range. In addition, since the majority of dust generated by the process were known to be silica dust, the particle density used in the airborne particulate density calculations was changed reflect this. 

This ensured more accurate dust monitoring of the true airborne particulate density and reduced the potential for false alarms.